Give Her Back
by JustClem
Summary: Max cries because the memory is too far up for her to reach and too blindingly white for her to see. All she remembers is a blue butterfly, and the ocean, and a crooked, comforting smile that never changes in the years she left her.


Max awakens, tears of pain in her eyes, heaviness in her body due to disuse. She tilts her head to one side, the empty one, praying desperately for it to be warm and filled with the scent of oil and smoke and marijuana, and not freezing cold with a stale smell - almost like a hospital, only without the antiseptics and whiteness.

She whimpers and clutches the mattress until they tear, and even then she continues to grip at it. She can't seem to stop.

"Give her back." Her voice is frail, weak. She despairingly wishes her words to be an order, and yet they end up a beg, a plea. Her voice is frail, weak. She is weak.

She shuts her eyes and knits her brows and bites, bites, bites until it hurts and keeps on biting.

Pain is euphoria; it serves to distract her from the emptiness - the hollowing, harrowing nothingness.

(Anything is better than nothingness. _Anything_.)

"Please, I'll do anything. Give her back to me. I want her back."

To whom she is speaking, not even whatever Gods and Goddesses in the clouds and sky above know. She certainly doesn't.

(Not like it stops her from begging, from screaming her voice hoarse, or from burning what's left of her sanity away with no care, like old photographs, or older letters of confession.)

She stares up at the cracked, old and dusty ceiling as if it were more than a cracked ceiling that's withered with age.

"I need her. Please. I care about her. Give her back." It's a mantra. A delusional one. Yet she keeps saying it, like her words mean something to this cruel, cruel world she can't escape from.

She cries. She cries because the memory is too far up for her to reach and too blindingly white for her to see. All she remembers is a blue butterfly, and the ocean, and a crooked, comforting smile that never changes in the years she left her.

"I said give her back!"

How dare they take her away! Her name, her face, her smell, her love; it's gone. It's all gone.

Max will never see her again. Ever.

No more snarks, cheesy flirtatious pick-up lines, and a love so, _so _strong Max can willingly fall to it with her eyes closed without fearing for any pain.

Gone. Everything. Her life. Her everything. Everything.

"Max! Max!"

Who is that, up and above?

No. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.

"Max, please! Look at me! Or at- at least breathe, dammit! You need to breathe!"

"Leave me alone." Max isn't sure whether those few words ever left her mouth. Nothing is clear. Nothing at all.

"Max, listen to me! You need to breathe, Max! Just breathe in with me!"

She can't. She doesn't want to. She wants to be with _her_. And if she can't have that then she'll die, for no life is worth living without her everything.

"Please!" A hiccup, or is it a sob? "Please. I can't lose you again. Please…"

Something cracks and quivers and _breaks_ in that voice. And it makes those words sound more a plea and less a bark of order.

It disturbs Max, down to her very core, and her teeth clanks as she tries to search vehemently the reason for it. Why, why, why? Why is that? Why does it disturb her? It shouldn't disturb her, should it? For whoever leans above her is a stranger, and only a stranger.

A scream that is never let out.

Panting. Hyperventilating.

Loss.

Grief.

The tightening of knuckles.

Teeth so closely drawn together they threaten to break.

Damp.

Eyes, darting all over and unseeing.

Pain.

(Blood.)

She can't remember the reason. She can't remember much of anything. She _can't- what-? Where am I? Why am I here? I- I want home! Send me home! Please! Just send me home! I can't take this anymore!_

"Max!"

Max - that is her name, is it not? - opens her eyes. It's as if she's been underwater, and is now pulling herself up with the guidance of that achingly familiar voice and is able to breathe again.

Only, the land is cold and damp and dreadful. And she finds herself shivering and sweating and wanting the pain to stop, stop, stop, please make it stop.

"Max, look at me. Look at me, right now."

Max doesn't want to. She tries, anyway, more for that broken-sounding girl above that won't leave her alone than herself.

"That's it, Max. Breathe."

"Where-" She chokes, splutters, and tries again. "Where am I?"

"Our apartment." Apartment? What? "You remember, right?"

Max shakes her head, and senses more than hears the breathy sigh that is the response. (Her ears are ringing, so the world is muffled, but their faces almost touch, and that sigh tickles her cheeks. That's how Max knows she's sighing.)

"We're in Portland. We have been for months. Settling in, you know?" A cough, intended to clear the throat. "You just opened your new studio. And I work in-"

"Who are you?"

Everything stills. And the creaking sound of the mattress shifting sounds more like woods cracking, breaking, _shattering_. It dizzies her. She squints and wonders why her vision is all but clear, as though someone had broken the lens of the camera that is her eyes, and now everything's always out of focus.

(Max sees nothing but the snaps of white lights and hears too much of that click, click, click and shutters of camera taking a picture. Another breathy exhale, only rougher, not bringing her any sense of comfort, accompanied by whispers of innocence and the beauty of ripping it apart from someone and shedding it and leaving that someone cold, and lost, and confused, and utterly, nauseatingly corrupted.)

"It's me. Chloe."

Max should remember. She really should. And she takes it a good sign that hearing that name makes her chest ache, but in a good way. It's like her heart is screaming at her, shouting at her things that were obvious, things she should _know_, but doesn't.

"Chloe." Max tastes that name, feeling it reverberate in her tongue, swallowing it down and letting its warmth spread around her body. It's something metallic and wistful. It's barbs, and wires, and prickly thorns. It's the strength Max always wishes to have. _She's_ all of that, and more.

She's Chloe.

Chloe.

"I'm here, Max. I'm here."

"You're here."

Relief is quicksand; it pulls you down slowly, bit by bit, and before you know it, you're engulfed in it and you have no way of pushing yourself up - if you try to, you'll drown deeper.

Quicksand is nice, and soft.

Max likes quicksand.

Max sobs and pulls her down by the waist to hug her, Chloe, who she knows she can trust despite not remembering anything. It's instinctual. Like the need to breathe in, and out, and so forth.

"You're here. You're really here."

"I'm here, I'm here."

"Chloe…"

"Yeah, that's me. Finally starting to remember, huh."

No. She's not remembering, for remembering includes memories, and her mind is without one.

She's feeling, sensing, relying on instinct that she knows - without an explanation - will always guide her to what's right, or at least what's right to her.

Max clanks her teeth together to keep herself from saying all of that. She knows not why. She only knows that she doesn't want Chloe to be distressed - or maybe she's too exhausted to want to utter another word - so she closes her eyes, and relishes in having her in her arms.

"Where were you?"

"I was here, the whole time."

Stale silence. "I didn't see you."

"I know."

Chloe sighs as if they've danced this dance before, and now she's bored of it and wishes to move on to a fresher kind of dance. Only, Max is stuck behind, for she doesn't remember any other dance.

She barely remembers her own name.

She knows something, though.

"I love you."

That's something she knows without having to remember anything.


End file.
